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| caption = Imogen Stuart in 2011
| caption = Imogen Stuart in 2011
| birth_name = Imogen Werner
| birth_name = Imogen Werner
| birth_date = 1927
| birth_date = 25 May 1927
| birth_place = [[Berlin]], Germany
| birth_place = [[Berlin]], Germany
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2024|03|25|1927|05|25|df=y}}
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2024|03|24|1927|05|25|df=y}}
| death_place = Dublin, Ireland
| death_place = Dublin, Ireland
| occupation = Sculptor
| occupation = Sculptor
Line 22: Line 22:
}}
}}


'''Imogen Stuart''' ([[née]] '''Werner'''; 1927 – 24 March 2024) was a German-Irish<ref>"[https://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_miriammeets.xml Interview with Miriam O'Callaghan]". [[RTÉ Radio 1]], ''[[Miriam O'Callaghan|Miriam meets]]'', 17 May 2012. Retrieved 25 March 2024</ref> sculptor, influenced by 19th century [[Expressionism]] and [[Insular art|early Irish Christian art]]. She mainly produced wood and stone for settings for churches, but also produced works in bronze, clay and [[terracotta]], created many secular works, and has been exhibited internationally.
'''Imogen Stuart''' ([[née]] '''Werner'''; 25 May 1927 – 24 March 2024) was a German-Irish<ref>"[https://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_miriammeets.xml Interview with Miriam O'Callaghan]". [[RTÉ Radio 1]], ''[[Miriam O'Callaghan|Miriam meets]]'', 17 May 2012. Retrieved 25 March 2024</ref> sculptor, influenced by 19th century [[Expressionism]] and [[Insular art|early Irish Christian art]]. She mainly produced wood and stone for settings for churches, but also produced works in bronze, clay and [[terracotta]], created many secular works, and has been exhibited internationally.


Born and raised in pre-war Berlin as the daughter of the well known art critic {{ill|Bruno E. Werner|de}}, she was exposed to [[Modernism|modern developments]] in the visual arts from an early age and a significant influence on her later work. She studied in [[Bavaria]] from 1945 under the sculptor and professor [[Otto Hitzberger]], who became an early mentor. She met the fellow Hitzberger student and later important Irish sculptor Ian Stuart while in Bavaria in 1948. The couple relocated to Ireland in 1961, at first living in [[Glendalough]], [[Co. Wicklow]] at his parents house, before moving to [[Sandycove]], [[Co. Dublin]].{{snf|Heaney|2024}} Ian Stuart was the grandson of the [[Irish republicanism|Irish republican]] revolutionary [[Maud Gonne]]. They had three daughters, but divorced in 1973 after a long separation.
Born and raised in pre-war Berlin as the daughter of the well known art critic {{ill|Bruno E. Werner|de}}, she was exposed to [[Modernism|modern developments]] in the visual arts from an early age and a significant influence on her later work. She studied in [[Bavaria]] from 1945 under the sculptor and professor [[Otto Hitzberger]], who became an early mentor. She met the fellow Hitzberger student and later important Irish sculptor Ian Stuart while in Bavaria in 1948. The couple relocated to Ireland in 1961, at first living in [[Glendalough]], [[Co. Wicklow]] at his parents house, before moving to [[Sandycove]], [[Co. Dublin]].{{snf|Heaney|2024}} Ian Stuart was the grandson of the [[Irish republicanism|Irish republican]] revolutionary [[Maud Gonne]]. They had three daughters, but divorced in 1973 after a long separation.

Revision as of 16:55, 29 March 2024

Imogen Stuart
Imogen Stuart in 2011
Born
Imogen Werner

25 May 1927
Berlin, Germany
Died24 March 2024(2024-03-24) (aged 96)
Dublin, Ireland
OccupationSculptor
Notable work
SpouseIan Stuart (div. 1973)
ParentBruno E. Werner [de]
Websitewww.imogenstuart.com

Imogen Stuart (née Werner; 25 May 1927 – 24 March 2024) was a German-Irish[1] sculptor, influenced by 19th century Expressionism and early Irish Christian art. She mainly produced wood and stone for settings for churches, but also produced works in bronze, clay and terracotta, created many secular works, and has been exhibited internationally.

Born and raised in pre-war Berlin as the daughter of the well known art critic Bruno E. Werner [de], she was exposed to modern developments in the visual arts from an early age and a significant influence on her later work. She studied in Bavaria from 1945 under the sculptor and professor Otto Hitzberger, who became an early mentor. She met the fellow Hitzberger student and later important Irish sculptor Ian Stuart while in Bavaria in 1948. The couple relocated to Ireland in 1961, at first living in Glendalough, Co. Wicklow at his parents house, before moving to Sandycove, Co. Dublin.[2] Ian Stuart was the grandson of the Irish republican revolutionary Maud Gonne. They had three daughters, but divorced in 1973 after a long separation.

Stuart spent most of her life in Ireland, occasionally returning to live in Berlin. She is one of Ireland's best-known sculptors, with work in public and private collections throughout Europe and the U.S.

Life

Altar carvings, Honan Chapel, Cork, c. 1986

Born Imogen Werner in Berlin on 25 May 1927,[3] she was the daughter of Katharina (née Klug), a former art history student originally from Upper Silesia in today's Poland, and the internationally known art critic and writer Bruno E. Werner [de]. She had one her sister, Sybil,[4] and both spent their childhoods in pre-war 1920s Berlin, and encouraged by their father became interested in drawing and sculpting at a young age. Through artist friends of her father, Imogen was thought techniques in craft and sculpture. However, from the mid-1930s, her father – who was partly Jewish but had served in the First World War – detected a "tremendous rage" in German society. It was at this point, according to the art historian Kate Robinson, that Imogen's "golden childhood came to an end".[5]

She moved to Bavaria in 1945 in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. There she studied under the sculptor and professor Otto Hitzberger until 1950, learning modelling, carving and relief techniques wit a variety of materials.[6] She met her future husband, the Irishman Ian Stuart there in 1948; he also studied under Hitzberger and became a significant Irish artist in his own right. Ian was the son of the writer Francis Stuart (1902–2000) and Iseult Gonne (d. 1954)[4] and a grandson of the Irish republican revolutionary and feminist Maud Gonne (d. 1953), who became known as a muse for the poet W. B. Yeats (d. 1939).[7]

Figures at the front of the altar in St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh

The couple moved to Ireland in 1949, at first living in with his parents at Laragh Castle near Glendalough, County Wicklow, into what—given his family background—the writer Kate Robinson described as a "notable mixture of politics and literature".[7] She later said that "It is very hard to describe how different this country was from the country from which I had come. It was a totally different world, on a different planet. The Catholicism, the nationalism, the magical countryside, made it all seem like going back a hundred years."[8] They had three daughters: Aoibheann, Siobhan and Aisling. Siobhan died in a car crash in September 1998 and is buried in Glendalough.[9] Although they divorced in 1973, she spent most of her life in Ireland.[9]

Imogen Stuart died on 24 March 2024,[10] aged 96.[11]

Career

The Virgin and Child (1991), on display at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Stuart's work informed by 19th century Expressionism but grounded in early Medieval early Irish Christian art,[12] in a sensibility also influenced by the later Romanesque and Gothic art periods.[13] She worked in wood, bronze, stone, steel, clay and terracotta, and although her primary was producing settings for churches borrowing from later Insular art, she also designed and sculpted many secular works.[2][14]

As the most prolific sculptor for both Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland churches interiors, examples of her work care found across Ireland. Her best-known sculptures include the monumental sculpture of Pope John Paul II in St. Patrick's College, Maynooth[15][16] and the carved altar and baptismal font in the Honan Chapel, in Cork City.[2][17]

Her work extends beyond church settings, and includes a commissioned bust of ex-president Mary Robinson now in Áras an Uachtaráin (the presidential residence in Dublin),[11] the Flame Of Human Dignity at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris;[18] collections of silver, gold and bronze jewellery, drawings, monumental works in wood, stone, concrete, bronze and other media.[19]

Within the sharply defined limits of material, subject, space, size and money given, I learned to develop within myself a great freedom of expression. My life is full of gifts or minor miracles. I never intellectualize – the eyes and senses dictate my hands directly. Once the work has been completed a symbolism becomes so obviously and profoundly evident that I have to regard it as supernatural

— Imogen Stuart in Notes on the Life of a Sculptor[20]

She designed the sculpture in the town square of Ballymore Eustace, County Kildare. With Vicki Donovan she designed the silver tabernacle in St. Mel's Cathedral, Longford, Longford.[21]

During her later career she often worked with other carvers including Phil O'Neill and Ciaran Byrne.[11]

Gallery

Awards and legacy

A professor of sculpture at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, she was also a member of Aosdána,[19] and received honorary doctorates from Trinity College Dublin (2002), University College Dublin (2004), and NUI Maynooth (2005).[26] She was elected Saoi ("wise one") by Aosdána in 2015 as the highest honour that can be bestowed by the state-supported association of Irish creative artists.[27]

In 2010 she was awarded the McAuley medal (named after Catherine McAuley, founder of the Sisters of Mercy in 1831) by the Irish president Mary McAleese, who paid tribute to her "genius", crafting "a canon of work that synthesises our complex past, present images and possible futures...as an intrinsic part of the narrative of modern Irish art".[28] The biography "Imogen Stuart, Sculptor" on her work and life was published in 2002 by the art critic and writer Brian Fallon, and included a foreword by the archaeologist and historian Peter Harbison.[29]

References

Notes

  1. ^ "Interview with Miriam O'Callaghan". RTÉ Radio 1, Miriam meets, 17 May 2012. Retrieved 25 March 2024
  2. ^ a b c Heaney 2024.
  3. ^ Fallon 2001, p. 160.
  4. ^ a b Robinson 2002, p. 215.
  5. ^ Robinson 2002, p. 216.
  6. ^ Robinson 2002, pp. 216–218.
  7. ^ a b Robinson 2002, pp. 215, 218.
  8. ^ Robinson 2002, p. 217.
  9. ^ a b "A life in stone: Sculptor Imogen Stuart reflects on her life". The Irish Times, 2 October 2021. Retrieved 25 March 2024.
  10. ^ Irish Times death notice.
  11. ^ a b c Scally 2024.
  12. ^ "Visual Arts: Imogen Stuart". Aosdána, Irish Arts Council. Retrieved 25 March 2024
  13. ^ Robinson 2002, p. 218.
  14. ^ Daly 1974.
  15. ^ Robinson 2002, p. 222.
  16. ^ Forristal 1987, pp. 648–651.
  17. ^ O'Callaghan 2016, p. 168.
  18. ^ "Imogen Stuart".
  19. ^ a b "Aosdána – Members – Imogen Stuart". Aosdána. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
  20. ^ Stuart, Imogen (1988), "Notes on the Life of a Sculptor", Milltown Studies 22, pp. 92–94
  21. ^ McDonagh 2014.
  22. ^ Robinson 2002, p. 219.
  23. ^ O'Donohue, Bryan. "Tokens". Irish Arts Council, 1993. Retrieved 26 March 2024
  24. ^ McGarry 2008.
  25. ^ a b McBride 2008.
  26. ^ "The Arts Council expresses its sadness at the passing of Aosdána member and Saoi, sculptor Imogen Stuart". Arts council of Ireland, 25 March 2024. Retrieved 26 March 2024
  27. ^ Duncan, Pamela (16 September 2015). "Imogen Stuart, Edna O'Brien and William Trevor elected Saoithe". Irish Times. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
  28. ^ Scally 2010.
  29. ^ Robinson 2002, pp. 215–222.

Sources

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Imogen Stuart.
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